Keeping Buffy Relevant Forever: Limerick Edition

Vanessa’s Team Pick:

real talk, at the end of the this episode my very calm/cool/collected gf was like “wait…this is really really sad” and i couldn’t answer her because i was bawling, duhvia waffle-meringue.tumblr.com

I was going to open this post with Angel’s monologue from Passion (2×17) so I could talk about how passionate I am about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but then I actually revisited that text and remembered how twisted it is, so let’s just say my love for BtVS is of the extremely passionate variety but not in a creepy I’m a vampire who just got rid of my annoying soul and now I wanna kill everyone you’ve ever loved kinda way, but more of a, Wow, I would love to read clever limericks re-capping each and every Buffy episode kinda way.

Which is so lucky for me, because guess what? That’s an actual real thing you can do!

what if the show took place in 2012 and they had okcupid i mean that could have been horrible obviously but think of all the queer dating storylines they could have written for willowvia waffle-meringue.tumblr.com

Sometimes it’s hard to explain exactly how much Buffy the Vampire Slayer means to you without sounding like a crazy person, and sometimes you start trying to write your own recaps and they turn into 10 page essays that no one, not even your girlfriend, will read, and sometimes you step out of the Whedon fandom into the real world and find yourself arguing, “It doesn’t matter that the show ended in 2003, it is still relevant and important and perfect, okay?!”

remember when during gchatting for freedom rachel said paul ryan reminded her of someone who would be in the creepy frat on buffy where college boys try to sacrifice girls to a malicious reptile god? that’s this episode!via waffle-meringue.tumblr.com

Vanessa is a queer feminist writer, NYU grad, crush monster, and Jewish Grandma In Training. She has a radical brain, a mushy heart, and a million floral print dresses. She's currently on a big adventure but she'll be back one day, pinky swear. In the meantime, she can sometimes be found on twitter and instagram.

Part of me wishes I were capable of playing it cool and pretending like I haven’t been, like, obsessively searching out every mention of our limericks online for the past few days, but — obviously that is not in the cards for me. So, thank you so much for this very kind write-up! We definitely started this project to highlight all the weird, wonderful moments that make us love Buffy, and to remind ourselves of all the crazy things we’d forgotten about between now and our last full-scale rewatch many years ago. Like, the fact that the Scoobies’ first principal was eaten by hyena-possessed teenagers.

Also — I definitely missed the Rachel Maddow comment about Paul Ryan and it is TOO PERFECT, HOLY CATS.

haha oh my goodness that kind of coolness is totally overrated. you should be obsessively searching and i hope you’re getting many more positive reviews because the blog is perfection.

one small note — it was the brilliant and incredible autostraddle senior editor rachel who made the paul ryan comment, NOT rachel maddow (though she probably agrees, because duh.) but credit where credit is due

This is exactly what I needed today. I was just trying to convince my girlfriend to watch (aren’t we always trying to convince them?) and also recently found out that my friend did NOT in fact loose my season 3 dvds from my box set*. This is just the most delicious icing on the cake.
*Never lend your Buffy dvds. It’s stressful.

So I teach a Freshman English class as a grad student, and I’ve previously taught The Hunger Games trilogy and Firefly. Next semester I’m thinking of doing Buffy and using it to talk about gender, sexuality, and power. Any suggestions?

Well, there’s a ton of books to use (several have been written on using Buffy as a text for academic study and discussion) but I’m not sure if anyone’s used them before. Like Buffy Meets the Academy, Sex and the Slayer, Why Buffy Matters, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy, Buffy Goes Dark, Undead TV, Seven Seasons of Buffy, etc.

Also, does anyone have specific episodes they think would lend themselves particularly well to academic discussion, or which would provide good opportunities for writing?

In terms of writing in general, I think “Hush” would be a really interesting episode to use, as a way to think about writing a story about people interacting without using any dialogue. For some of the other themes, “Smashed” would be good for looking at power & gender (i.e. Buffy had to see Spike as an equal before anything could happen between them), and any of the episodes where Willow’s witchcraft comes up heavily, especially the ones where she is either “going bad” or re-learning to use her powers for good would be interesting for looking at ideas around female power. “Innocence” and “Surprise,” as well as “New Moon Rising” are good for talking about sexuality as it relates to the main characters. “Where the Wild Things Are” would also be a good starting point for conversations about societal ideas about sexuality. Hope these help!

There are so many great things you can do with Buffy on gender/sex/power. I wrote my senior thesis on Buffy with the thesis being that Buffy is a third wave icon because of how she redefines female power by incorporating traditional feminine and masculine forms of power. But there are so many great resources – I would recommend looking into Slayage, which is the Whedon Studies Association’s journal that originally started out as just Buffy but is now everything Whedon.

Also, I may or may not have drove from Michigan to Florida by myself to go to the Whedon Studies conference when I was 19.

“Sometimes it’s hard to explain exactly how much Buffy the Vampire Slayer means to you without sounding like a crazy person…”

This is the story of my entire life. And then you happen to find someone else who loves Buffy, and those poor people who witness you both coming to this realization then think you’re both just completely, completely insane. Good times!

One of my good friends I’ve known for 20 years (since 3rd grade!) recently started hanging out again after we both moved back home after college. We just realized we both loved Buffy after all this time. Now all our friends know and think we are crazy to watch a show thats been off the air so long and act like it all just happened last Tuesday! Its their loss though.

This is fantastic. “Buffy” is forever linked to my queer awakening (or at least the time when I was shaping my personal identity) and I’m so glad it will forever be relevant.

Also, no lie, “Passion” is one of my all time favorite eps. It gave me chills the first time I saw it and, along with the musical, the episode with Veruca (I don’t know a lot of ep names), Andrew’s ep in season 7, and the ep where Buffy thinks she’s in an asylum, it’s one I’ve watched over and over again.

it’s actually not optional. someone MUST do something from once more with feeling. (just kidding everything is optional at camp but please please please someone do something from once more with feeling.)

I just want to tell everyone that on Halloween I was watching Kate Nash and Emmy the Great re enact Once More With Feelings in Hackney and it was amazing and Kate Nash was a great buffy and I dressed up as Dark Willow with veins on my face and afterwards she gave me jelly tots which I couldn’t eat because I’m a vegetarian and I felt really bad but it was the best night ever. I think there are videos of the songs on youtube, they should definitely be checked out.

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